


Speak, Mephistopheles

by orphan_account



Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Avengers Movies Universe, The Avengers (2012), The Avengers - All Fandoms, Thor (2011)
Genre: Alternate Universe, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-06-26
Updated: 2012-08-19
Packaged: 2017-11-08 14:15:58
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,616
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/444058
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There was a rumor that people whispered behind their hands whenever he walked by, a rumor that Tony Stark sold his soul to the Devil for his fame and fortune. No one rises from the ashes overnight, after all.</p><p>Tony did absolutely nothing to discourage this rumor, because it was, in fact, true. </p><p>Well. For the most part.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> This story leans heavily on every tale ever told about Satan, Lucifer, Old Scratch, The Devil, etc. Mostly, though, it is drawn from Faust and Paradise Lost. There's no need for background knowledge of either of these, however. This is an AU in that it sometimes follows the events of the first Iron Man movie, but I've taken white-out and a sharpie to the timeline, as well as changing out the Norse mythology of Thor for some good old fashioned Christian lore.

His first memory isn’t of his father.

Instead, there was a soft-spoken woman holding his hands as he waddled around. It’s fuzzy at best, so vague that he almost doesn’t believe it’s real. But at the strangest times, it creeps up on him. There are nights even now that he dreams of dark skin and a scent probably meant to be floral, but from a spray so cheap that it became something sharp and overbearing.

He doesn’t know who the woman is, other than that she was a nanny employed by his father after his mother died in a car accident. Meanwhile, Howard had been gallivanting around in the Arctic, and all Tony can think now is that maybe if his father had been around more to take care of him instead of poking through ice for his long lost BFF, maybe, just maybe Tony wouldn’t be in the situation he’s in right now.

Then again, Howard Stark probably wouldn’t have been the best model for stellar decision-making anyways.

¤¤¤

“Hey, whoa whoa whoa! Stop! STOP!”

Tony Stark had yet to learn that yelling at runaway bits and pieces of metal seldom worked, mainly because it always seemed to work for his dad. However, as everyone in the world saw fit to remind him daily, Tony was hardly his father.

His shoulders slumped as the thin wheel of aluminum that he had hammered and slowly formed himself crashed into the wall, denting and crumpling in on itself. Now a pitiful semicircle, it flopped over onto the carpet. Tony sighed and scratched at his neck, staring at the rest of the metal debris he’d snagged from underneath his dad’s nose earlier. “Well, at least nothing’s caught on fire yet,” he muttered to himself as he stood to collect the now ruined aluminum.  Turning it over in his awkward hands that the rest of his body hadn’t grown into yet, Tony weighed the benefits of trying to re-use the metal; pounding and rolling it into a flat strip again would take a couple of hours, and he wasn’t sure he had that much time before his dad got home and noticed-

The door to Tony’s room opened to reveal Howard Stark, face stern as he stared down at his fourteen year old son. He didn’t even say anything, simply raised a thick eyebrow pointedly at the pile of scrap metal on the desk. Tony dropped the aluminum onto the pile and shrugged, grinning.

¤¤¤

When he was four, Tony had built his first circuit board. His father had been proud, up until it was discovered that the board didn’t function properly.

At six, the engine had been a surprise from Tony to his father. Howard had given Tony a brief pat on the head before examining it. No matter how hard Howard hoped it wouldn’t, the engine suffered the same fate as the circuit board- after working briefly, it sputtered and died.

Howard hadn’t understood the source of his son’s failures, and he didn’t have the time to sit around and correct everything Tony did wrong. Instead, he poured himself into his research, hiring nannies to look after Tony while he wasn’t around.

Tony wasn’t unintelligent; he proved that much with his schoolwork. In fact, the boy was probably a genius in his own right. He simply lacked the ability to take the numbers and blueprints, and solidify them. His creativity was endless, and there was hardly a moment when he wasn’t scribbling down some design or another… but every single one of his engineering projects flopped at the testing stage.

Nevertheless, Tony was accepted to MIT at the young age of fourteen. Howard barely acknowledged this accomplishment beyond having a slightly more expensive wine served when they ate their silent dinner that night.

The next fall, Tony didn’t even give the mansion a second glance as he stepped clumsily into the back of the sleek beige car that would take him as far as his new dormitory. When the driver snapped the door shut behind him, it held a note of definite finality.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for brief depictions of torture.

The massive leather recliner was the perfect place to lounge while scrawling into the margins of his old Differential Equations textbook. Tony sprawled carelessly with one of his legs thrown over the high back (a feat for someone of his vertically challenged stature) and the other dangling over an arm. His pen clacked against his teeth every couple of seconds – he had a terrible habit of biting things while he thought, and no desire to break said habit.

The long list of homework he’d been saddled with in his graduate courses to do over the break had been a snooze-fest, and Howard had locked all of the labs and even the library while Tony was home unsupervised. Rolling his eyes and scratching his bare chest with his free hand, Tony reflected that maybe filling nearly all of his dad’s books with crude notes and half-baked ideas for inventions probably hadn’t been the wisest move when he was perpetually on the man’s list for just existing as it was.

Tony shivered in the chill and tried to ignore the lonely echo that greeted him when he coughed. His father was off plotting the next Stark Expo, and had written off Tony’s pleas to allow him to help with an ease born of practice.

“You’ll be back at school before we’re even close,” Howard had muttered as he slid into a thick peacoat. “Try not to burn the house down,” had rattled around Tony’s head long after his ears stopped ringing from the sound of the door slamming.

Scoffing, Tony perched the thick textbook cover-down on his stomach, revealing that there really was a world that existed beyond mathematics, and he’d simply forgotten about it.

He looked around fuzzily, a massive yawn cracking his jaw as he reacquainted himself with the universe at large.

Every muscle in his body locked when he noticed the three pairs of eyes watching him from across the room. One moment he was tensed in the chair, legs still spread wide like a whore, and the next there were two bodies clothed in scratchy black holding him down, pinning him to the floor when he rolled from the chair in an attempt to get away.

One of them clocked Tony in the jaw when he reached for their mask, so he turned and bit the guy’s fingers. Hm, leather. Not exactly his kink, but okay.

“Ow, you little bastard!” Tony smirked around the gloved fingers and clamped his jaw down tighter. He was kicking and squirming, screaming as best he could around his mouthful. The man whose fingers Tony was grinding down on joined in on the screaming.

“You two can’t do anything right, I swear –,” and everything went white for a moment when a boot smacked into the side of his head. A hand in his hair pulled him up, drool and blood and those fingers slipping free from his now slack mouth. Rough hands tugged him up, a sack slipped over his head, and his hands were suddenly locked behind his back. They’d spared no expenses, obviously- the rope was rough and the sack smelled like potatoes.

“Nrghk,” Tony muttered artfully, hoping they got the message that he was seriously pissed from the tone if nothing else.

It seemed like hours passed before he was finally released from the sting of the ropes, the blood rushing back to his arms. Maybe it hadn’t been a great idea to struggle the entire way there, he was pretty sure he’d dislocated a shoulder. They’d also tied his feet together after he’d caught one of them in the crotch with his slippered foot.

Laying there, he could make out bad fluorescent lighting past the burlap. His ears were still ringing from the blow to the head and no one had bothered to pick up his house shoes when they were lost in the struggle to stuff him in a van. And now his feet were cold.

He grunted his displeasure, rolling over.

With his arms free, he could take the sack off and observe his surroundings if he wanted. Instead, he kept still, his cheek pressed against the rough material, which did nothing to protect him from the freezing floor. Probably concrete, the unimaginative bastards.

To be honest, Tony had been waiting for the day this happened. His father had never let Tony venture out alone for just this reason; there had always been someone in Tony’s eyesight carrying an inconspicuous pager. When your dad was the owner of the biggest name in weapons manufacturing, not to mention one of the wealthiest men alive, certain precautionary measures were taken.

Sometime between wondering what they wanted from his dad and trying to figure out how the hell they’d managed to bypass the mansion’s security, Tony passed out.

¤¤¤

“-and we are not willing to negotiate. We are not interested in your money. If you want your son returned alive, you will give us the serum.”

Tony woke up to a bright light in his face and his hands tied behind him again. If he squinted, he could just barely make out the black lumpy shapes of video equipment. None of it was especially remarkable; actually, everything these guys did seemed almost laughably amateurish. Tony couldn’t stop himself from giving a little hiccup of hysterical laughter.

Immediately, there was a knifepoint pressed just under his jaw. Hot breath wafted over his face, and he looked up to meet the angry gaze of a very large man with a buzz-cut. Apparently the recording session was over already.

“I hope you got my good side,” he rasped. Not like he was one to pass up an opportunity to be a smartass. “I wouldn’t want to disappoint the adoring public.” Hopefully he managed to keep the bitterness out of his voice; the public didn’t give a damn about Tony beyond the fact that he was Howard Stark’s son once they’d found out he wasn’t going to be following in his father’s footsteps.

“Oh no, junior. This is for daddy’s eyes only. You’re going to be the goose that gets us the golden egg.” Buzz-cut grinned, and Tony’s stomach dropped. For a brief moment, he wasn’t sure if his dad would be able to cough up the requested ransom; Tony knew that Howard had never actually been able to reproduce the fabled serum used to create Captain America.

Instead of letting his fear show, he forced himself to take deep breaths and go blank.

“Well good luck with that. I don’t think my dad just keeps golden eggs lying around, unless he’s hidden them in his Swiss bank account.”

Buzz-cut looked decidedly unimpressed, aiming a patronizing smile down at him. The knife was stored away with a flick of Buzz-cut's wrist, for which Tony was thankful, but before he could relax and unclench his buttcheeks there were hands grabbing him up from the chair.

“Take him to Vicki. I’m sure he’ll enjoy the company,” Buzz-cut ordered before turning away, shirt stretching tight over back muscles that quite frankly scared the shit out of Tony.

The hands wrestled Tony down a dimly lit hall with no concern for his skinny sixteen year old arms.

“Hey, hey, hey! I’m not a delicate maiden boys, why don’t you just go for the gold here and snap my -,” his jibe devolved into a high-pitched screaming squeal that he would never admit to making, but in his defense his upper arm had just been broken like it was a toothpick. He could feel his face paling as the men just continued dragging him along. Tony made a mental note to not make any more sarcastic requests that threatened his body’s safety unless he was willing to put his money where his mouth was.

He was deposited into another concrete room, the only difference between this and the former being some exposed piping on the walls and the lack of recording equipment. A man whose body put Buzz-cut to shame stood behind a plain steel table. Vicki was apparently not short for Victoria, Tony mused.

And then three of his teeth were knocked loose by a massive fist.

¤¤¤

By the time Tony was left alone, Vicki had removed two of his toenails, broken his nose, and poured rubbing alcohol on the scrapes he received after being flung around the room. Tony just supposed he should be thankful he got that as a ‘gift’, since an infection would be much more dangerous than any broken bones in his situation.

He was given a legal pad and a stubby crayon.  It was enough to keep him occupied for the brief hours he was left alone, and it was soon full of nonsense equations and schematics. They took it then, but not before Tony managed to eat all of his designs, just in case they got any ideas.

Every day he was taken back to the room with the recording equipment, and shoved into a seat in front of a camera. After that, he was taken to see his good friend Vicki, who roughed Tony up just enough to make him look worse each day without inflicting any fatal harm.  Buzz-cut got progressively angrier after receiving a response that Howard Stark was willing to pay cash for Tony’s life, but that there was no serum to give.

Then, there came a day where Vicki was waiting in the room with the camera. There was no chair. Instead, Vicki enjoyed a rousing game of ‘see how much we can make Tony bleed before he passes out’, proving that he was a master at wielding dull knives. The entire thing was recorded on a VHS, which was shipped off in a neat unmarked box to Stark Industries.

Tony often wondered what his dad was doing, if school had started back up, if any of his professors and colleagues noticed his missing. They were probably thankful he hadn’t come back, he mourned. All he’d ever been was dead weight to everyone, and the world might be better off without Tony Stark around to ruin his father’s company.

He felt like one massive wound after the first two weeks. He wasn’t even sure he was recognizable as Tony Stark anymore. Vicki was a master at what he did, and not even Tony’s back-sass garnered anything more than a lifted eyebrow and a yank to his hair.

Everything was cold, all the time. The fresh legal pad sat in the corner, untouched because all of his fingers were too swollen to grasp the crayon. Tony, quite frankly, was getting tired of pissing and shitting in a bucket and having to smell it all day.

So no-one was more thankful than he was when Buzz-cut announced with a smirk that Howard had sent the serum.

“You’d better hope it works, Stark,” he threatened. “Or else it’s your hide we’ll be taking our disappointment out on.” Vicki cracked his knuckles and flexed. Tony groaned.

Needless to say, the serum was a well-meant attempt at getting Tony out alive. He couldn’t blame his dad for sending the dud. The scream echoed around the upper floor, and Tony shut his eyes at the sound of boots storming towards his cell.

The metal door squealed open and hands snatched him up.

¤¤¤

“You’re looking more and more appetizing with each passing day, Mister Stark.”

This voice was new. Most of his captors were macho men who spoke an advanced form of neanderthal, but this voice, it was distinctly... _svelte_. Sleek and husky. Something European?

Tony tried to lift his head to search for any hidden speakers, but he could barely see past his swollen eyelids. Buzz-cut had taken over Tony’s torture, seeing as Vicki had been reduced to slop by the fake serum, and he was nowhere near as graceful in his methods.

“Shh, calm down.” A cool hand passed over Tony’s burning forehead, the disembodied voice hovering somewhere over on his left. His head whipped in that direction, but there was nothing.

Tony began to hyperventilate.

“I said,” the voice growled, “calm down.” There was something powerful in that command, and Tony found he couldn’t resist obeying. He held his breath and stayed painfully still, hoping that would be good enough for the voice.

“That’s better.” The hand resumed petting his forehead, which was nice. Creepy, but nice. Tony eventually relaxed into it. He wondered if this was an attempt to give him Stockholm syndrome.

The voice chuckled darkly, and for some reason it sent shivers up Tony’s spine. A hand pressing gently on his diaphragm made him exhale, and he resumed breathing almost normally, only slight hitches betraying his fear.

“I am not here at the behest of your captors. I originally came to feast on your pain and revel in your slow death, but you have managed to elude my grasp many times so far. Your soul is quite slippery, Mister Stark. It burns with the desire to live.” There was a strange hissing sound, and the long-fingered hand in his hair tightened just slightly too much, making Tony flinch.

That can’t be right, Tony thought. He tried voicing his disagreement, but the voice shushed his slurred noises.

“Be silent, there are guards at your door. I am here to offer you salvation.” The voice seemed amused by itself, although Tony couldn't imagine what could possibly be funny about his loss of sanity. “However, nothing in life is free. You will need to offer me something in return.”

Tony was still, listening attentively. The hands left, and suddenly a pair of blisteringly bright blue eyes stared down at him. Nothing else, just two eyes.

They floated from side to side, regarding him. “Your soul would do," the voice drawled.

Unable to help himself, Tony attempted to reach up and grab one of the eyes. It rolled wetly around in his palm as he closed his fist around it. The voice huffed, as if Tony were a toddler whose antics were irritating, but mildly amusing.

“I see you’re unable to answer in your current state-,”

“No thanks. I don’t make deals with my psychological projections.”

His dry response was barely audible, but obviously the voice heard. The eye in his grip burned for a moment as they flashed a mean red, and then both of them popped out of existence again. The hands returned, stroking his badly bruised neck, and certainly Tony was imagining the subtle threat there.

“Allow me to introduce myself. I’m known by many names, but you may call me Loki. It’s by far my favorite. You humans have gifted me with such a multitude of epithets, it’s sometimes quite difficult to decide.” Amused, again. Tony was going to get whiplash from how quickly the voice changed moods.

Heat seeped through him again as the hands left him for a final time, leaving him feeling oddly bereft. He was sure that he was hallucinating this, but even so, swearing your soul off to some disembodied voice was just a little bit too nuts for Tony. Snarking that obviously no introductions were needed on his end suddenly seemed like too much effort, so he simply went limp.

“Please, consider my offer Mister Stark. I understand that you do not involve yourself in matters of... _faith_ , but if you do not accept, you’ll find yourself faced with an eternity in the clutches of my realm sooner rather than later. This is really just a win-win scenario for you.”

Tony rolled over onto his back and waited for the voice to continue trying to persuade him, but instead he was greeted with the now familiar buzz of the fluorescent lighting.


	3. Chapter 3

Buzz-cut’s thick fingers wrapped around Tony’s broken upper arm and jerked him upright. And that’s Tony’s wake-up call. It comes as such a shock after a quiet dream of soft careful hands on him that Tony vomits a snail-trail of bile down himself.

“Disgusting,” Buzz-cut growled under his breath, obviously doing his macho man best to ignore Tony’s single soul-heaving sob that followed.  He gave Tony a good hard shake for the boy’s trouble.

Tony didn’t begrudge himself the moment of weakness, but he immediately went on guard, refusing to let Buzz-cut rustle him around without at least a bit of smart mouthing. It felt like the only way he could give himself the illusion of an upper hand, nowadays.

He spit on the floor at their feet, throwing on a breezy facade of sunshine and smiles. “Gotta keep this dashing figure somehow.” His ribs played peek-a-boo every time he inhaled nowadays. Bulimia jokes were usually a surefire recipe for the giggles (weren’t they?), yet Buzz-cut just looked unamused, lips pulled tight in a flat grimace. Tough crowd. That was okay, though - Tony laughed loud enough for the both of them.

All down the hallway he listened to the clopping of boots, smiling at everyone they passed. Several of the men seemed somewhat freaked out by Tony’s inability to just roll over and offer his belly, and he took advantage of it, staring each and every one in the eye until they looked away uneasily. His own feet were still painfully bare and perpetually on the verge of frostbite. Good news was that if he ever got out of there, Tony was pretty sure he could make his own new pair of shoes from the thick callouses on his feet.

The routine did not change. Tony wondered if he’d even expected it to. When he was tossed into the hard wood chair, Tony relaxed as much as he could into the now familiar backache.

¤¤¤

By the time he was hustled back into the tiny cell he now knew as home, Tony could actually open both of his eyelids more than halfway. Instead of being happy about this development, he became surly at the headache that the harsh lighting gave him.

“You know you really should consider redecorating,” he sniped at Buzz-cut. The man seemed almost surprised for a brief moment, raising a bushy eyebrow at Tony’s honest anger.

His response was a half-hearted backhanding that sent Tony stumbling into the unsympathetic embrace of a cement wall.

Tony glared at his shit-pail and came to the decision that he would not stand back up. That was enough fighting for the day.

The sound of the heavy door clicking shut brought back a hazy memory that slipped away before he could catch it.

¤¤¤

This time around, the hands started smoothing up Tony’s bare arm. His captors (and he still had no idea of who they could be, or who they were working for, or even their motives beyond their desire for the Super Soldier Serum) had spared him a dirty tank top, but he was still in the same pajama bottoms they’d dragged him there in.

“Hello,” the voice whispered right into his ear.

Tony definitely did not jump.

Except he definitely did. That was just too freaky.

“Uh, hi,” he rasped. Even to himself he sounded confused, like he was asking a question instead of offering a greeting. It was painful work sitting up, but he managed.

Soft, cold fingers wrapped around the back of his neck to help him, sending chills down his spine. Tony refused to admit that he was surprised – he hadn’t actually expected his mind to try playing this trick on him twice.

The voice tutted at him. “Mister Stark, while I admire your tenacious ego, I must inform you that not even a mind as _magnificent_ as yours could imagine me into existence.”

Staring in the general direction the voice had come from, Tony blinked.

“Okay. Sure. But then why can you read my thoughts? That’s what you’re doing right? And let me tell you, it’s kinda creepy, so I’d be thankful if you could just, you know, go away, maybe?”

 He was greeted by silence. If not for the hand still rubbing the back of his neck (and he wasn’t some cat or dog to be pet, but he carefully did not mention that lest the hands leave him, and it was really the only kind touch he’d had for what, the past _month_ now?) Tony would’ve been sure that the apparition had left. It took more than a few minutes for the voice to speak again. Tony spent that time decidedly not relaxing.

“What must I do for you to believe that I am not simply a figment of your, ah, admittedly impressive imagination?”

Tony startled. He’d almost forgotten he wasn’t alone.

“Well now that you’ve asked, I can’t just suggest something to you. That’d just defeat the purpose. Although,” he hesitated, unsure of what his ‘impressive’ imagination could cook up, “if you weren’t just a disembodied voice, maybe it might be easier to convince me.”

Silence again, and then a gusty disbelieving laugh. The hand left his neck.

“Of course, Mister Stark.” Definitely amused.

Tony watched with a distrustful gaze and his lips pressed into an unimpressed line as _something_ stood where the voice was coming from. It seemed to be just a long, thin shadow. It lengthened across the room at awkward angles, playing tricks with his eyes, hovering in his peripheral vision and making him clench his hands into tight fists. Eventually, the shadow converged into a shape almost resembling a man, aside from the sharp angles and the curl of long dark horns. The terrible lighting caught against a gold pattern wrapping around the tall horns like tiny rivulets of fluid, seething as if it was a living creature. A deep green pocket square caught Tony’s eye next, leading him down the long inches of an obviously well-tailored suit.

Calm blue eyes in a pale face more frightening than his every nightmare stared down at him when he looked back up.

“ _Jeezus_!” Tony cried, pressing his shoulder against the wall.

The tall man, _Loki_ Tony’s brain helpfully reminded him, threw his head back and laughed, apparently unconcerned that they might be heard. Loki’s neck caught Tony’s eye. The length of it, the shift of muscles, the protrusion of a sharp adam’s apple… something about it gave him chills.

Loki returned his gaze to Tony with a final amused sigh, glacial eyes half-lidded in mirth. “Oh Stark, you have no idea how far away Jesus is from you right now, do you?” That sinuous voice had gained depth with the solid form, a measure of inflection rooted in something sinister. Like every word was dipped in cyanide and offered up disguised as a cupcake.

The thing, Loki, stooped into a crouch. A bony hand that peeked out from a very finely cut suit settled on Tony’s ankle, not comforting at all, but tangible.

Real.

Tony couldn’t help the instinctual attempt to pull away. Everything about Loki screamed ‘Predator!’, and being in such confining quarters didn’t help. The hand tightened and Loki tugged Tony flat with a single yank, then began crawling over him, hissing through a toothy grin.

“W-whoa, okay. You know I’m usually okay with attractive people climbing me like a jungle gym, but usually there’s less blood and terror involved-,”

“Be silent. You defend yourself too readily. I will leave you with your insignificant scrap of virtue intact.” Now that there was a face to the voice, Tony could watch the amused smirk tighten thin lips, and see those blue eyes slowly shift until they were the color of a granny smith apple. The hands that were as cold as before tilted his head left and right, Loki’s knees on either side of his chest, one pressing uncomfortably against Tony’s armpit. Damn, this guy was bony.

“Listen closely,” Loki drawled as he shifted back, seeming satisfied. He stood, and the vantage point made Tony extremely uncomfortable. There was intent to everything Loki did, even this – he meant to instill fear into the teenager, and damn if he wasn’t succeeding.

“I will offer you another chance at life. Your father, though he is surely trying, will never be able to rescue you. You will die here, a miserable, slow, painful death.” Loki smiled, sounding almost gleeful, but Tony couldn’t find anything funny about what he was being told.

“In return for your sad, small soul, I offer you, Anthony Stark, not only rescue from your impending death and all of the misery with it, but a future bright with opportunity.” Black arms spread impossibly wide, an encompassing gesture that almost made Tony flinch. “Your mind will be righted to its intended perfection, you will inherit your father’s company, and you will have no shortage of success. You will be adored, everything you have silently begged to be your entire life.” He lifted a pale hand and tapped a finger against his lips as he considered Tony with grass-green eyes, which were swirling with flecks of blue like a tornado, making Tony queasy.

“I am unsure of what else to offer you,” he admitted finally.

Tony stared, flabbergasted.

“Okay, so… what. You’re like, the devil or something?” He whispered. Apparently this was just the right thing to say to set Loki off into yet another fit of mad chuckles.

“Yes, Mister Stark. I am indeed. Though I do believe I’ve given you the privilege of addressing me as Loki.” That once again cool blue gaze was almost disapproving now, although Tony wasn’t sure what he’d done wrong.

“Okay, Loki. Sure. Uh. Could you let me up please?”

Staring him down silently, Loki slowly shifted the pointed toe of his nastily heeled boot off of Tony’s tank top, allowing the teenager to prop himself on his elbows delicately. There was an awkward silence between the two of them.

Rolling those ever-shifting eyes, Loki slid a slim-fingered hand into Tony’s disgusting hair, ignoring the clots of blood and sick. Snarling, he dragged the young man up until he was on his feet. They were as face-to-face as they could get with the massive height difference, Loki still towering over Tony. Hunched, that black form just seemed even more unnatural.

Without realizing it, Tony had lifted his arms and braced them against Loki’s chest, knees weak.

“Three days, Stark,” Loki snarled. “In three days you will accept my offer, or die.”

Before he could lick his lips to reply, the hand was gone, a slim shadow curling against the floor at his feet and snapping underneath the door.

Shaking on the floor, Tony gave himself a mental pat on the back for not pissing himself.

¤¤¤

His sick mind hadn’t played any more tricks on him yet. Buzz-cut was perpetually scowling as usual, and there was a tension hovering in the air. It grew worse with each day that went by, until even Tony stopped mouthing off, wondering where the SWAT teams and superheroes all were now.

Everyone was getting too tired to keep it up. Tony barely managed to stay awake long enough to count off the days on his mental tally. Left alone for such long stretches of time, all he had to occupy himself with was his thoughts.

Loki didn’t visit the first day, nor the second.

But true to his word, he came back on the third.

¤¤¤

Tony was completely focused on his fingernails, trying adamantly to dig the dirt and grime from underneath them. The sudden chill that the room took on when he reached the thumb of his right hand gave him reason to pause.

“Hey, Loki,” he chimed cheerfully, going back to his task with glee.

Frozen fingers threaded into his hair almost fondly, and he could feel that tall, imposing figure against his back. He just did his best to ignore it, waiting to see what the Devil had to say today.

“They’re coming, Stark,” whispered wetly against his ear. Alluring, persistent. “Your friends have brought knives as sharp as your tongue. They will use you to set an example. Your death will be made into good sport, sent wrapped up neatly in brown and twine to your _dearest daddy_.” Loki actually sounded excited, his breath quickening, cold where it brushed Tony’s fevered cheek.

A strained hiss as fingers tightened, Loki’s grip suddenly painful.

“You answer, Stark.”

Should he? This wasn’t the stock exchange, he couldn’t come back from a bad break and settle his losses. This was it. His soul, on a platter, to the Devil. Was he willing to live his entire life knowing that his success was a sham, bought and paid for like some hot commodity?

“Yes.”

Pale lips pinched together as Loki tried to hide a pleased smile unsuccessfully. The fluorescent bulb above them whined and practically screamed before popping, coating the room in black. Tony didn’t have any time to regret his decision before the Devil shoved a hand into his mouth. With no ceremony, Loki slithered down his gullet.

“Gnhk?!”

Tony clutched at his throat with both hands as the sinuous black shape curled deep inside of him, a solid shadow slowly suffocating him. Before his confusion could turn into panic, it looped and spilled back out of him, puddling back into Loki’s form. Pale hands righted his finely cut suit, rubbing the material. His satisfaction was visible, eyes gleaming red in the oppressive dark.

“What the fuck was that?!” Tony choked out, still coughing.

Loki smirked. “Just laying my claim. Don’t worry. I’m not allowed to try to cash in on your soul earlier than Fate decides.” He gave Tony a pat on the head and watched him while he slowly blacked out, red eyes full of mocking pity and the corners of his mouth curled up.

Lids dropping, curtains closing. Rustling sounds and then a sudden nothing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I apologize for the delay in updates. Should be a chapter every week from here on out.


End file.
